Khaki Files, talks about Dr Jalees Ansari who was accused of carrying out bomb blasts in Hyderabad

The residents of Mominpura, a sprawling shanty town where the suspect supposedly lived, formed a well-knit community and were not particularly appreciative of governmental agencies—least of all the police—intruding into their territory.

An advance party comprising Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Pramod Mudbhatkal and Inspector Raman Tyagi first tried to locate the charitable hospital in Mominpura but drew a blank. Satish, heading the joint police team of STF and Mumbai Police, did not wish to carry out obtrusive inquiries for fear of crowds gathering and creating a law and order situation. He called me on Gabbar Singh's office number from a local STD booth in Mominpura to ask if the informant had shared any further information. The informant had by then given details of several landmarks, which I shared with Satish. He and his officers looked for them but could locate neither the charitable hospital nor the doctor's whereabouts.

By then it was well past midnight and the residents of Mominpura had retired for the day. Except for a few tea stalls and paan shops, all business establishments had closed. The streets were relatively deserted, with stray dogs barking at the alien policemen prowling the area. It had been hours since the search had started. A few passers-by had begun to cast suspicious glances at the CBI men, who were running out of time. Satish was losing patience and getting tense. At a street corner, he spotted a taxi parked with its driver sitting inside, waiting, perhaps, for his last customer before he called it a day. On an impulse, Satish asked the cabby if he knew of a charitable hospital in the neighbourhood as a close relative of his required immediate medical attention. The cabby asked if Satish was looking for the 'khairati' (charitable) hospital run by Dr Jalees Ansari. Satish, ignorant of the name of the man who ran the charitable hospital, took a chance and said yes.

The cabby gave precise directions not only to the hospital but also to the chawl (shanty) where the doctor lived, which was on the floor above the hospital. Luckily for Satish, he offered to walk with him and point out the place.

As the cabby began to lock the car doors, Satish signalled Pramod and Raman to follow him but at a distance. The police officers felt they were finally in business. Adrenaline began to course through their veins and their hearts began to pound uncontrollably. They knew, almost instinctively, that their quarry was within sniffing distance, much like a predator on sighting its prey.

Satish and the cabby, with Pramod and Raman in tow, reached their destination in no time. The charitable hospital, with a prominent sign, stood right before them, and above it was a row of chawls, all almost identical and barely visible in the feeble light emanating from the municipal lamp posts nearby. Satish asked the cabby if he could do him one last favour. Could he accompany him to the doctor's chawl lest he knock on the wrong door? The cabby obliged, walking up the creaking stairs with him, down a narrow corridor and right up to the doctor's chawl. He knocked on the door, announcing that someone needed medical attention urgently.

A young boy, aged about fourteen, opened the ramshackle door of the shanty. Satish asked if Dr Ansari was at home. By then the bearded doctor, who was in his early forties, came to the door and asked Satish what the matter was. Satish engaged him in small talk about a non-existent patient in need of medical help, while his two officers walked right into the chawl. Before the doctor could object to the men walking uninvited into his house, they started to look underneath the scant furniture and rummage through the old, rusted trunks lying in the house. The doctor, enraged, began to curse at Satish and his men and ordered them to leave his house. Just then, an officer from Satish's team forced open a steel trunk in the loft of the living room and found weapons, detonators and wires inside. The discovery of arms and bomb-making material put paid to the doctor's protests.

The commotion at Dr Ansari's house had woken up his neighbours. Word of a police raid spread like wildfire, and a small crowd collected by the roadside, a flight below the doctor's chawl. The number of onlookers began to increase by the second. The police team realised that they were likely to be surrounded and overwhelmed. Satish sent a wireless message to the Mumbai Police control room, using the handset of the local police team escorting him, and asked for reinforcements. A fairly sizeable contingent of armed police arrived at the spot. Nonetheless, the crowd was agitated as Dr Ansari was a popular figure in his neighbourhood. As soon as the police team emerged with Dr Ansari from his chawl, the crowd started raising slogans against the cops. With great difficulty, the joint police team took Dr Ansari out from Mominpura to the STF office, located near the Sachivalaya in south Mumbai.